News in brief

Wedding-list firm owes £8,000 to charities

Eight charities, including Shelter and War Child, are owed £8,000 by Wrapit, the wedding-list company facing receivership. The money was pledged by friends and families of couples whose wedding lists asked for charitable donations.

Wrapit's managing director, Peter Gelardi, has promised to repay charities out of his own pocket if the company failed to secure a rescue deal next week. Gelardi said yesterday: 'I am hugely aware of our obligations to our charities [but] I'm afraid that right now I can tell you no more than that I will do my utmost to ensure that these are paid.'

However, in an email to a customer whose charities had not received donations of £200, he said: 'I will, if necessary, pay these myself.'Amelia Hill

Pretty in pink: old-style flowers blossom again

Varieties of homegrown flowers that fell out of fashion are making a comeback, with florists reporting a surge in demand for cottage-garden blooms like delphiniums, sweet peas and pinks. At Waitrose, sales of British blooms are up 30 per cent year on year and the store has started selling homegrown pinks for the first time in a decade.

Sarah Holland, of the Flowers and Plants Association, which represents the cut-flower industry, said TV shows had put British-grown flowers back in vogue. Carnations are the most popular cut flower in the UK, followed by lilies and roses.Jamie Doward

A greener image for Bernard Matthews

Bernard Matthews, the company that gave the world Turkey Twizzlers, is aiming to ditch its image as a producer of fattening, processed food and reinvent itself as a healthier brand.

Eighteen months after sales plummeted following an outbreak of bird flu on one of its farms, the firm is unveiling a frozen range called the Big Green Tick. The new line, made from pure breast meat and containing no artificial colours, preservatives or hydrogenated fats, is designed to win over health-conscious shoppers.

It comes three years after Jamie Oliver, the television chef, singled out Turkey Twizzlers for criticism in a campaign to overhaul school meals.

In a further bid to restore confidence, the Norwich-based company has pledged to no longer use any imported bird meat in its processed turkey slices, or sell turkeys raised outside Britain.Ben Quinn

Burial battle over baby who died 21 years ago

A father who has refused to bury his baby son for 21 years is involved in a bitter battle to prevent council chiefs organising a funeral against his wishes.

Stephen Blum believes a contaminated vaccine was to blame for the death of his son, Christopher, in June 1987. But a pathologist's report claimed the child, who was four months old, died of cot death. Blum has refused to give consent for a burial ever since and the body has been kept in a hospital mortuary. Now authorities claim they have a 'legal right' to bury Christopher.

As a result, Blum is now preparing a legal battle in the High Court to prevent the funeral going ahead.

'The key point about my son's death is that you cannot have cot death if a cause of death is found,' said Blum. 'In Christopher's case there was a cause.' Blum's story was first covered in The Observer in the Eighties.Martyn Halle

Snap up a beach hut as the prices cool off

They have become the ultimate weekend accessory. And such is the demand that in some of the UK's more fashionable coastal areas beach huts have been changing hands for six-figure sums.

But as Gordon Brown may learn if he takes a walk along the Suffolk coast where he is holidaying this summer, the credit crunch has started to bite. Hagen Rose, who set up Beach-huts.com three years ago, says that huts in Mudeford in Dorset, at the entrance to Christchurch Harbour, now go for £100,000 instead of £160,000. At the lower end of the ladder, a hut at Hayling Island near Portsmouth has been reduced from £12,000 to £10,000.Jamie Doward

Sculpture gallery set for return to toilet

The first London gallery devoted to modern sculpture has been rediscovered - in a staff lavatory at the Sir John Soane's Museum. Soane created the hidden gallery, once known as the Tivoli Recess, to showcase his prized collection of plaster busts and models by the leading sculptors of the day. But more than 50 years after the architect died in 1837, the treasury was dismantled and turned into a toilet for the museum's curators and administrators.

This weekend the director of the museum, Tim Knox, announced that the lost Tivoli Recess would be restored as part of a £6.3 million campaign to return the museum to the way it looked during the architect's own time.